Читать книгу Indonesia: Islands of the Imagination - Michael Vatikiotis - Страница 6

The Land Under the Rainbow

“Men came down the Asian mainland into the archipelago, and crossed to the emerald-green islands around the equator, the Land Under the Rainbow. They came in small dug-outs and outriggers a very long time ago, in the dim and distant past, far beyond the memory of the present Indonesia.”

— Mochtar Lubis (1977)

The golden dragon, ostensibly a Chinese symbol, is also a symbol of the Sultan of Yogyakarta and his palace or kraton.

Crowning the summit of the ninth-century Buddhist monument of Borubudur are many aspiring Budddhas or Bodddhisatwas, men on the verge of achieving enlightenment.

In a world full of color and variety, Indonesia is a galaxy in its own right—thousands of far-flung islands, never ending and always changing, filled with people of all shades and cultures. If the world was ever recreated on a bare canvas, Indonesia would be used as the palette on which to mix the colors.

It’s hard to appreciate Indonesia’s amazing diversity from the first glimpses of a gray, muddy coastline that marks the approach to Jakarta’s international airport. The riot of sound and color begins on the ground. There’s the noise, a constant chatter of sing-song Indonesian language with its hard consonants, long rolling “r”s and musically-lilting intonations. There is the ever-present smell of clove-scented kretek cigarettes, a hint of fried garlic and onions in the air, and the pungent odor of charcoal. And then there are the smiles. People are always smiling and baring their teeth—great expanses of gum and enamel; there doesn’t seem to be any embarrassment when it comes to showing off bad dental work. Welcome to Indonesia.

A welcoming smile from two boys in an outrigger canoe off the coast near Ujung Pandang in South Sulawesi. Much larger versions of these craft took Indonesia's outer-islanders across oceans as far as Madagascar.

Indonesia is an archipelagic nation, meaning that it is defined by islands and the seas that separate them. With more than 17,000 islands, it’s hard to maintain a mental map of them all. There are of course the larger islands of Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi and Borneo, arrayed like the limbs of a dismembered marionette across the Indian Ocean. Then there are the smaller, farther-flung islands to the east with evocative names like Ternate, Tidore and Banda—islands that once played a larger role in the nation’s early history when the world craved cloves and nutmeg to cure and preserve food. Back in the 16th century the seas between these islands were as well known as the waters around Falmouth or Plymouth or Hoorn, from where leaky wooden ships set sail in search of spices. Not much has changed since then in these tiny volcanic specks of greenery, set like emeralds in a sapphire sea.

Being an archipelago helps to sustain Indonesia’s variety. There’s a natural insularity about the place and people are proud of their distinct traditions and cultures. Languages vary, although one of this country’s great achievements has been to disseminate a national language, Bahasa Indonesia, that is understood by all. It’s hard to get lost in Indonesia with a few words of Bahasa.

A fisherman patiently plies the waters off Menado, North Sulawesi, in a traditional perahu.

Inland Indonesia is cradled by soaring peaks and conical volcanoes, the flatlands between given over almost entirely to rice cultivation. For with more than 235 million people to feed, Indonesia’s farmers are pushed to exploit every single square centimeter of land. On the island of Java, the world’s most populous island with 125 million people, the landscape is so heavily sculpted by man, that it’s hard to find a natural feature.

Here man is master of the environment. Rice cultivation, one of the world’s most intensive forms of agriculture, harnesses a confluence of natural forces: the mud that shapes the paddy field and provides organic sustenance; the water than sluices through using gravity as a manager; and the sturdy water buffalo whose feet weigh just enough to preserve the hard pan of mud that holds the water in the paddy field. Then there is the patient farmer, wading the field in a months-long cycle that begins with the planting of green leafy shoots and culminates in the harvest of the yellowed grain stalks. Bent over double, mostly under a scorching sun, there are few occupations anywhere that involve so much manual toil and yet are so critical to man’s survival.

Nature, like everything else in Indonesia is colorful and complex. Indonesia’s wildlife can be divided into two distinct regions. The British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace first postulated that there was an imaginary dividing line between Asiatic and Australian fauna. Named after him, the Wallace Line passes between Bali and Lombok islands at its southern end and runs northward from here between Kalimantan and Sula-wesi. It then curves to the east along the southern edge of the Philippines.

The planting of tender green rice shoots in a previously plowed and flooded field is painstaking work.

A fierce looking Komodo dragon. Their jaws are alive with bacteria that infect the slightest wound inflicted by the lizard's sharp teeth—and they will attack humans if they smell them nearby.

The vast jungles of South Kalimantan. Indonesia's tropical forests, though fast disappearing, are a valuable biological resource.

Along this line Wallace observed a major break in fauna based on his observations of birds, especially of parrots, throughout the islands in the area. Wallace was puzzled by the fact that Asian birds thrived on the island of Bali, while just 25 kilometers (15 miles) across a narrow strait, the island of Lombok was missing some prominent Asian species. The birds on Lombok were more clearly related to those of New Guinea and Australia than those of Bali. He marked the channel between Bali and Lombok as the divide between two great zoogeographic regions, the Oriental and the Australian. The line also acts as a barrier to Asian species of freshwater fish and large mammals, which cannot be found east of the Wallace Line. It is certainly striking to be traveling in the far-flung eastern province of Papua and come across kangaroos and gum trees.

However, there are many species indigenous to Indonesia, like the “orangutan” (which literally means “man of the jungle” in Indonesian) apes of Sumatra and Kalimantan and the giant “dragon” lizards, which are the only giant reptiles of their kind in the world today roaming free on the island of Komodo. This throwback to the dinosaur age is protected within a heavily guarded national park. Similarly, the one-horned rhinoceros of Java, the wild “banteng” oxen, tigers and many other species are now protected in wildlife reserves.

Indonesia is also home to some of the largest stands of primary tropical rainforest in Asia, and therefore is an important repository of the region’s biodiversity. Indonesia’s natural beauty makes it a feast for the eyes, and yet what is truly remarkable is how closely man and nature interact in a landscape constantly moulded by man. Perhaps the best-known man-made features are the intricate rice terraces of Java and Bali. Built along the contours of this volcanic landscape, they offer the most efficient way to exploit the land and yet somehow lend more beauty to the scenery. Close up the visitor can wander along the grassy mud-built bunds that rim the terraces and feast one’s eyes upon the fluorescent colors of the ripening rice, whilst listening to the relaxing sound of gurgling water as it drains from one terrace to the next. There are few man-made or natural landscapes as pleasing or as friendly to the senses.

The Indonesian archipelago has collected people like a giant colander, as waves of itinerant mariners, passing traders and refugees, invaders and migrants have over the ages passed through or across the seas between these islands. The earliest Indonesians were some of man’s earliest forbears. Fossils of “Java Man” (Pithecanthropus Erectus) dating back some 500,000 years, were first discovered in Central Java, suggesting that some of man’s earliest ancestors inhabited the island of Java. The “original” human inhabitants of these islands were black-skinned relatives of the Australian aborigines and present-day Papuans. Later migrations to the Indonesian archipelago have been traced as far back as 3,000–500 B.C. They were lighter-skinned peoples from what is now southern China who arrived by boat via Taiwan and the Philippines and have been credited with introducing to the region new Stone, Bronze and Iron Age cultures as well as the Austronesian languages and rice agriculture. Recent discoveries on the island of Flores have uncovered evidence of an early humanoid species (Homo floresiensis) that stood no taller than 90 centimeters (three feet) high.

The elephant “school” in Lampung, South Sumatra, where elephants are trained to extract timber.

An orangutan observes life from a tree in Gunung Lawang, South Sumatra; these gentle primates are now protected by law.

The contrast of light and dark that haunts many Balinese paintings is seen here in stark reality near Ubud.

A farmer stops to rest on the edge of his rice field in Ubud, Bali. Rice cultivation is a labor-intensive task and there is seldom time for idleness.

Rice terraces in Payangan above Ubud, Bali.

Classical dancers from the ancient palace or kraton in Yogyakarta. Children are taught classical dance from an early age in Central Java—a part of their heritage that reaches back into the pre-Islamic Hindu past.

A Sumatran beauty dressed in wedding finery. West Sumatran women own all landed property in one of the world's only surviving matrilineal societies.

A Buginese girl from South Sulawesi wearing her traditional costume. These proud sea-faring people produce delicate works of filigree and bold textile designs. Their looks are deceiving; fine featured but tough and aggressive. As migrants all over Indonesia they make formidable commercial competitors.

A Balinese temple dancer made up for a performance. Hindu religious ritual and devotion is the source of this island's expressive culture of dance, which is very much alive on Bali today.

A Kenyah Dayak warrior chief in the lower Mahakam River in East Kalimantan. In ancient times victorious warriors lopped off the heads of their foes and ate their hearts and livers fresh.

Later on, Indonesia came under the influence of the Indian civilization through the gradual influx of Indian traders in the first century A.D. Their arrival saw great Hindu and Buddhist empires emerge. By the seventh century, a powerful Buddhist kingdom called Sriwijaya located on the southeastern coast of south-central Sumatra managed to expand its influence throughout much of Southeast Asia. The thirteenth century saw the rise of the Majapahit Empire in East Java, which united the whole of what is now modern-day Indonesia and parts of the Malay peninsula, and ruled for two centuries.

Later still, Muslim Indian traders and merchants laid the foundations for the gradual spread of Islam to the region, starting from Aceh at the northern tip of Sumatra and then moving to Malacca and the north coast of Java much later. Islam spread slowly and did not replace Hinduism and Buddhism as the dominant religion until the end of the 16th century. Small Muslim kingdoms did indeed develop, but none could resist the strength and persistence of the Europeans that followed.

The Portuguese came first, rough traders wearing wool and bearing the cross. In 1511, Portuguese trading posts were established in the strategic commercial center of Malacca on the Malay peninsula and it was from here that they began to reach out and establish trading posts along the north coast of Java and of course in the eastern Spice Islands. The Dutch followed at the turn of the 16th century and succeeded in ousting the Portuguese. The Dutch expanded their control of the entire archipelago in the 17th and 18th centuries and retained it for the most part until the outbreak of World War II in 1942.

As a result of this complex history, almost 600 different languages and dialects flourish in Indonesia today. Although the majority of the population are Muslims, some 85%, there are also thriving communities of Christians, Buddhists and Hindus—as well as animists. Overlaying the main religious groups are innumerable local beliefs and traditions associated with place and history. This all makes for a kalaedoscopic array of rituals and customs, each associated with its own colorful costume and design, ranging from the elaborate courtly dress of the Javanese to the golden horned headgear of the Minangkabau in West Sumatra.

A welcoming dance at Tanjung Isuy, East Kalimantan.

Longhouse entrance with ornate carvings at Tanjung Isuy, East Kalimantan.

Serene and awe-inspiring Mount Bromo in East Java. This desolate and deserted moon-like landscape looks oddly out of place on the world's most populous island.

A lonely horse rider on Mount Bromo's “Sea of Sand.”

A “sulphur-picker” at work in the Papandayan volcano in West Java.